Support for Families in Devon with Biff's Battle

Support for Families in Devon with Biff's Battle

Launch of support grants for families affected by childhood cancer in Devon

Support grants to be made available for families in South Devon who have a child newly diagnosed with cancer.

In South Devon, there are approximately 40 to 45 children diagnosed with cancer every year.

We aim to provide financial support grants to all these families

Our thanks goes to Biff’s Battle, a named fund of the Grace Kelly Childhood Cancer Trust for making this possible.

Overview

The Grace Kelly Childhood Cancer Trust is pleased to be able to announce the expansion of our project that provides support for children diagnosed with cancer. Currently, we provide financial support grants to families in Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire, but now we are able to extend these grants to South Devon. This is largely due to a large donation made to Biff’s Battle, a named fund of the Grace Kelly Childhood Cancer Trust.

About the Project

When a child is diagnosed with cancer, it can result in immense emotional and financial pressures for their families. Added costs include transport, parking, childcare for siblings, additional clothing and of course the fact that one or both parents may be unable to work.

Over the last 18 months, the Grace Kelly Childhood Cancer Trust has been proud to be able to provide financial support to families in Worcestershire, Herefordshire and recently to Gloucestershire.

Now, thanks to an extremely generous donation of £25,000 including gift aid to Biff's Battle of the Grace Kelly Childhood Cancer Trust, we are delighted to announce that we are now able to offer financial support to families in South Devon. The kind donor would like to remain anonymous but requested that this generous donation should be used to help support families in parts of Devon in memory of Elizabeth.

Biff's Battle was set up in memory of beautiful Elizabeth who sadly passed away from cancer in 2018. Since then, her mother Kathryn Voysey and her family have been tirelessly fundraising in her memory. To date, they have raised almost £34,000 for Biff’s Battle at the Grace Kelly Childhood Cancer Trust. You can read more about Elizabeth’s story here.

Currently in North Devon, there is already some financial support available for the families of children diagnosed with cancer. Until now, families residing in the remainder of Devon have had no such support. We are now working with Biff’s Battle to change this.

If a child from Devon is diagnosed now with cancer, whatever their postcode, there will be some financial help available for their family.

Our thanks go to the extremely kind donor, Kathryn Voysey and of course Biff’s Battle for making this possible.

“I am blown away by the donation and the fact we can set this up in Elizabeth’s memory. It means so much to us as a family to be able to help others in a similar situation to what we found ourselves in 3 years ago. I just hope we can continue to help for as long as possible. “

Dr Jen Kelly, Director of the GKCCT said,

“We are so grateful to Biff’s Battle and their incredibly kind donor who are enabling the Trust to support even more families. Without this help, the provision of support for families in South Devon simply would not have been possible. We hope in time that we will be able to roll out this support to other regions because a diagnosis of cancer has big financial implications for families irrespective of where they live.”

How many children can we help?

On consultation with treatment centres, we expect to receive referrals for approximately 40 to 45 families in South Devon each calendar year. We aim to provide non-means tested grants to each of this families who have a child diagnosed on or after 1st December 2019.

South Devon, is now the 4th region where we are now able to offer this support to families. Biff’s Battle, thank you.